The fight against alienation is real

Don't inflict help

Any time a professional person attempts to change an organization they belong they are going to face a backlash.  Socrates would argue that this kind of behavior was the product of ignorance.  The philosopher would say once people knew the difference between objective right and wrong, people would choose right.  It was an optimistic view of human nature and one which is non-existent in the contemporary office.  Business people can be nasty, cruel and brutish as Thomas Hobbes would call them in “The Leviathan.”  A business person can exhibit the manipulative insincerity of Machiavelli’s “The Prince.”  Worse of all, professionals can exhibit the traits of the “Ubermensch” running roughshod over the “last men,” as Nietzsche would call them.  Backlash, is natural in human progress and it is up to coaches and scrum masters to address it.

Fear and uncertainty dominate the contemporary office environment.  Lots of factors are to blame for this state of affairs, but the principal factor is the shareholder value postulate of business.  In this postulate, shareholders or investors are the most important constituency in a corporation.  Customers, employees, and communities which also rely on the corporation receive secondary treatment because they are not as important as shareholders.  It is how we have educated a generation of business leaders since the 1970s.

Combine this trend with the deregulatory actions of the conservative movement, and you have a recipe for sterile and exploitive work environments.  It does not matter if you are blue collar, white collar or in service industries you are generating wealth for others with little upside to yourself.   Karl Marx called this the “labor theory of alienation.” It is one of the few things which Marx has written which has held up to scrutiny over the years.

So the agile coach is often in an environment where people are alienated.  People work hard enough not to get fired but not too hard because they will be singled out for extra responsibility with no subsequent increase in pay or authority.  The “company way” keeps a person paid and provides a modicum of security.  It is a miserable and uninspiring way to work.  Thus, the coach or scrum master is fighting on three fronts.  The coach must address the apathy of individual team members.  Next, they are changing the perspective of managers who often benefit from the alienation of the workers they are supposed to serve.  Finally, inertia in the organization acts as an easy alibi to resist organizational change. It is frustrating.  You are hired by organizations to help them change, and they actively oppose the change.

What I have discovered over the last few weeks is organizations want to improve; they do not know how.  Companies need scrum masters and coaches to help them.  They are looking for individuals to offer help rather than inflict it on the organization.  Often a scrum master acts as a therapist or pastor to an organization.  A coach needs to practice non-violent language and help others find solutions rather than dictating those solutions.  It is not easy, but anything worthwhile is going to be difficult.  Backlash is natural and it is up to the agile community to turn it back on itself to effect real change.

Until next time.

Admitting personal failure

I failed.  I will get over myself.

There is a saying in the medical profession, “When God puts his hand on the left shoulder of a patient, take yours off the right.”  The meaning being that patients die and even the best doctor will have to accept that they cannot heal everyone.  This week I am leaving the University of St. Francis business incubator, and I am shuttering much of my start-up.  I want to discuss this on the blog this week.

Seven years ago, in the aftermath of my failed second marriage, I founded E3 systems. The goal was to create an online inventory management system which other small and medium sized businesses could use to manage their organizations better.  I wrote software non-stop for weeks.  I would sequester myself to focus on setting up business structures which would scale.  I had numerous arguments with my product owner who also happened to be my father.

I would run into various business situations like people expecting me to give them my product for free.  One potential client loved my work until they realized they would have to pay me.  I even did a classic Silicon Valley “pivot” writing software which handled fleet and equipment maintenance.  I flooded social media with youtube videos, tweets, and Facebook posts and information on my product.  I did everything with scalable technologies and paid for everything out of my pocket.  Sadly, I could not do business development and close sales.  As my advisor told me, I was a dilettante.  The business world rejected me with harsh Darwinian indifference.

I toughed it out for seven years.  I kept my day job and hoped someday I would pack up my cubical and go full John Galt.  The last two years have been a denial of reality.  I did not have a market for my products, or a means to sell those products.  I failed.

I am disappointed, but I have learned some valuable lessons.  I understand that I am pretty good at operations and project management.  My software development skills have dramatically improved including my use of SOLID and test-driven development.  I have been jumping on the chest of a dead business.  Everyone knew this but me.  Now that I have a moment of clarity, I see that now is the time step aside and accept its demise.

I will still be open for consulting and will be happy to continue Agile coaching but my days of selling software as a service are over.  I have a relationship with the Will County Project Acclaim which I will continue to support.  I am shuttering my cloud based software on September 1st.  I will keep this blog open because I still have plenty to share about agile and software development.

In the agile movement, we say, fail early and fail often. Failure is the ultimate learning experience.  As a failed entrepreneur of a startup, I consider this something which makes me a better leader, agilest, and software developer.  Once the disappointment wears off, I will be ready for my next act.  I suspect it will be a command performance.

Until next time.

The Hero's journey is no substitute for a product

A hero's journey is not a substitute for a product.

Each entrepreneur goes through a sort of hero’s journey.  If they are lucky, once that journey is finished they will emerge out of the other side stronger, wiser, and accomplishing something amazing.  It is no secret the technology world uses the language of science fiction and fantasy.  That is why a company which becomes extremely profitable it is called a unicorn.  As an agilest and entrepreneur, I convince myself that I am lucky and smart enough to aspire to this status.  It is the story I tell myself.  In the dark moments, it is what keeps me going.  This week, I want to talk about when story telling crosses the shadowy line from inspiration to deception.

Carl Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis, articulated the idea the human species has a “collective unconsciousness.”  This collective unconsciousness is the common characters or myths humans use to describe themselves.  The collective unconsciousness also describes what the human species aspires to become.

Joseph Campbell then built on Jung’s work in 1948 with his book, “The Hero with A Thousand Faces,” which talks about the similarities between the mythologies of western and tribal cultures.  Roman Gods were compared with the traditions of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines.  The similarities were too hard to ignore.  We had academic proof that the human species has a common story telling tradition.

Now that this knowledge was out in the open it did not take long for others to exploit it.  One of them was a University of Southern California graduate, who just has a hit film entitled “American Graffiti.”  The other was a technology entrepreneur who cultivated the image of a mystic shaman while he sold music players and later phones.

To be successful, a company needed a story and a heroic figure to pitch that story to the media and client.  It was a way of cutting through the clutter and getting the message out.  That lesson was not lost on Elizabeth Holms who dropped out of Stanford to found her company Theranos.   She created an image which was a frittata of Hitchcock’s icy blond, Steve Jobs techno shaman, and the elegant intelligence of Meryl Streep.  Her story was simple, she was going to change the world making blood testing affordable and less invasive.  She was smart enough and stubborn enough to found a company and make it happen.

The technology press swallowed the story hook, line and sinker.  Soon she was featured in press write ups, on television promoting her company, and receiving millions of dollars in venture capital.  I will not go into the details of Theranos and the fraud they committed.  Vanity Fair Magazine has already done an outstanding job on that front.  Suffice to say, Elizabeth Holms had a good story to sell but didn’t have a product.  Her blood testing tool was nothing but fantasy.

The lesson here is that every story should have a grounding in reality.  You cannot change the world with your products if your products do not work.  The rumpled engineers have to build something before the myth makers in sales and marketing come along.  Telegenic good looks and a story are not a substitute for business acumen and a product.

Anyone who grew up during the stupid and giddy time of the dot.com bubble should have known how this story was going to end.  They chose to ignore it and suspend disbelief because the story was good.  Instead of a hero’s journey, what the public got was a true crime story of fraud and greed.
It is a sobering lesson for an entrepreneur and consumer.  I hope that we are smart enough to recognize it before it happens again.

Until next time.

Why You Need E3 Systems

You need our products, find out why.

The life of an entrepreneur is filled with meetings.  Meetings with possible customers.  Meetings with prospective venture capital investors.  Finally, meetings with other entrepreneurs at social events to discuss how to generate more business.  It is a like your life becomes a blur of meetings and it is hard to keep track.  Last week, I attended a meeting with a local business organization to discuss search engine optimization and getting my business ready for the web.  I met some very helpful people and a mentor or two who challenged me about the products I sell and who could use them.  This week on the blog, I wanted to share my thoughts on why you could use E₃ systems.

We founded this organization three years ago because, we wanted to help small and medium sized businesses use the web just like the Fortune 500.  With to cost of bandwidth going down, the use of cloud based services, and the rise of mobile computing we felt that we could create tools which worked over the web for any business.  We also constructed those tools to work on tablet computers, mobile phones and traditional web browsers.

We created our Sully 2.0 tool to help you keep track of your inventory and to generate all the documents you need for shipping and receiving products for your business.  Since the software is cloud based, when we upgrade the software you automatically get an upgrade to your system.  We tied the system with QR coding technology so that you would never have to purchase expensive bar-coding software.  This could save you hundreds of dollars because our inventory management system can work with smart phones instead of expensive bar code scanning software.  With Sully 2.0 you can scan a QR code and see exactly what you have on hand and where it is in your warehouse.  So if you had a chance to keep track of your inventory and save hundreds of dollars in the process wouldn't you do it?

Our Tony tool, for the price of a burger or shake, makes it possible for you to track the maintenance on any vehicle or piece of equipment in your inventory.  This allows you to make sure that all your equipment is under warranty, properly maintained, and provides unimpeachable evidence in case of litigation or an accident.  This will help you save money in maintenance and insurance premiums over the life of your business.  We provided an e-mail reminder feature so that when it is time to fix a vehicle you receive an e-mail and we have also integrated QR code technology and the ability to place scanned receipts into the system to ensure that everything is up regulatory standards.  Again wouldn't you like the peace of mind that comes with having your information regarding any piece of equipment you have at your firm accessible over the cloud to your smartphone, tablet, or PC?  We make that happen.

So we give you easy to use and low cost technology tools which work over the web to help your business save money.  Who wouldn’t want that?  Reach out to us today and see how we can help you.  Being entrepreneur is difficult and filled with meetings but if we can help one business meet its goals then it is worth it.

Until next time.

Google Makes Another Smart Business Move.

The Cloud and Google are about making
money on the web and this is a good thing

Things happen for a reason in business.  This week is a classic illustration of that maxim.  Google announced that they were going to start charging for its online application suite which includes Google docs and Google drive.  This does not surprise me and I want to take some time out and explain why.

Many people outside the technology industry wonder how companies make any money building web sites and providing services.  During the first dot com boom, it was a simple strategy.  Generate lots of web traffic and buzz.  When that happens sell advertising to clients who are paying for those eyeballs.  It was a great strategy but it burned through millions of dollars of venture capital.  It also created spectacular failures like Pets.com; which generated loads of attention but lost eighty cents for each bag of dog food it sold online.  I still keep a few trinkets from the company to remind me how not to run a business.

More recently companies like Groupon have done a similar dance with death.  They have lots of attention but in doing so they have not figured out a means to make money with all that attention.  With the advent of cloud based computing and companies like E₃ systems, we have turned to a different model for making money.  It is a subscription model.  Servers, technical professionals, and infrastructure cost money and in order to pay for it we charge a low monthly subscription.  Google does the same with their Ad words product and the numerous numbers of services they provide.  Now they are treating Google docs just like any of the other for-fee services they provide. 

Being a Microsoft partisan, I still think that Office and Office 365 are superior products to Google Docs.  However, if you are a business person who is struggling to pay for licenses from Microsoft then Google Docs is a good option.  What Google is doing is keeping their product in line with the Microsoft and providing another stream of revenue. 

I am not surprised by this.  Google became the 600 pound gorilla of the web by providing and fantastic search engine and charging customers using the old model of revenue during the glory days of the dot com bubble.  Then something changed.  They started diversifying with their Android mobile phone system.  The Chrome browser is now an accepted standard on the web and they have made tentative steps into social media with Google plus.  What this creates another means to generate revenue and sell advertising.  Google Apps are different because there was no really good means to sell advertising.  So they could give the product away as a means to destroy Microsoft or they could charge a nominal fee and increase their profits.  If I am Larry Page, I know what I would choose and that would be more money for my organization. 

So what you are seeing is business people using the web in a much more sane fashion than during the dot com days.  Gone are the lavish parties and millions of dollars in corporate losses replaced with slow and boring revenue growth as more people use the web as the backbone of their business.  As someone who owns his own business and is following that model, I think this is a positive development. 

Drop us a line and find out about us.

Until next time.

The Times Are a Changing

Amateurs market software, pros sell software.

Back in the good old days of the internet, say between 1998 and 2002; if you had a dream and some venture capital you could found a company, hire a few friends, and play business.  That is until the money runs out and you have to file bankruptcy.  Many of those early start ups were huge vortexes of cash and bad management.  Many of them resembled fraternity houses populated with engineers and developers who attempted to have the fun they couldn’t have in college. 

There were a lot of great flame outs; Pets.com comes to mind right away.  Still in the aftermath, Amazon became the destination for one stop shopping on the internet and Google is one of the most valuable companies in the world.  This is the nature of business.  The strong survive and the weak are culled to make room for other attempts at innovation. 

I talk about this because another wave of internet companies are offering IPO’s on the stock market.  The professional marketing site LinkedIn is now said to be worth nine billion dollars.  All of that worth is investor enthusiasm; sales are but a fraction of that market capitalization.  It is easy for an amateur to look at this situation and think that they are ready for another gold rush.    

I am not an amateur. 

I have been in the trenches during the Dot.Com boom and bust.  I know what it takes to put together a good product that works on the web and mobile devices rather than in marketing presentations.  I am going to grow the business with sales and reasonable application of money.  Yes, a time will come where I will have to get some venture capital to grow the business but I want to be smart about it.  People are counting on me to manage their logistics and warehouse data.  That is trust that is earned through hard work and good engineering. 

My hope is the sales will take care of itself.  If not, I am going to be making a lot of cold calls and sending out a lot of mass e-mail.